Doctor Who and the Vampire Inversion

Here's a treat: Paul Hanley, who you may recall provided the original art for Forgotten Lives, as well as a whole host of other Doctor Who, cult film and original art, has teamed up with Bret Herholz, another excellent artist and graphic storyteller with a penchant for all things Who, to create The Vampire Inversion, a completely free new comic featuring the Shalka Doctor (as played by Mr. Richard E. Grant back in 2003, and fleetingly appearing onscreen again in 2024).

For this adventure, Paul has written the script and Bret has provided the art, and his scratchy blac-and-white style really works for this gaunt and foreboding Doctor. The Vampire Inversion is a postmodern adventure into vampire cinema, which also explores the hidden corners of Doctor Who's own mythology. As the cover page teases: "Two Doctors, vampires and... Andy Warhol?!" When you've enjoyed the comic itself, you can also read Paul's original script.

Paul and Bret have provided this comic for free, but do suggest that you might like to make a donation to one of the charities they've chosen to support: 

The Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT)

TRACTION (Trans Community Action)

Queertopia

The Central Florida Emergency Trans Care Fund

So, go on. Have a bite.

WHO REVIEW: 14-6 - "Rogue"

 

Tremendous fun. Sure, there were some more serious aspects, but basically, this was fifty minutes of gorgeously realised fun. 

This is, as telegraphed back in the series trailer, the Bridgerton episode. I've never seen an episode of Bridgerton, but this works as a pastiche if you've ever watched or read an Austen-style regency melodrama. I do think that maybe the script labours the point a bit, with Ruby mentioning Bridgerton three times, but it's refreshingly honest for an episode of Doctor Who to wear its influences to brazenly. It's also timed brilliantly; not only is it Pride Month, but it's aired just before the second half of Bridgerton's current season is released. This is an episode that's courting a very specific audience, and if though I'm not exactly in that audience, I can admire the skill there.

The fact that this is the queerest the show's ever got is bound to rub some viewers the wrong way but, frankly, bollocks to them. Doctor Who has been beloved by the queer community since the universe was half its present size. The alleged fans who are bashing out their screaming hatemail in caps were left behind a long time ago and the show doesn't need them. This is Doctor Who for a modern, queer-friendly, emotionally-free audience, and quite rightly, we have a modern, queer, emotionally-free Doctor. As good as Gatwa is when playing the Doctor as anguished, angry or scared - and we get some brilliant work from him there as well this week - he just sings when his Doctor is having fun. Literally.

It's funny to think back to 1996, when we had a handsome young Doctor in a wig and a velvet frock coat, fans were gnashing their teeth at his kissing a woman. Now, we've got another one, and he's throwing caution to the wind, kissing a man and being joyfully scandalous. The Fifteenth Doctor is the sexiest, flirtiest, most passionate Doctor we've ever had, and he's just perfect for this new version of Doctor Who. Still, it seems even more of a shame that we couldn't have Jodie and Mandip kiss in "The Power of the Doctor" in retrospect.

Jonathan Groff is almost as good, but in a very different way. Ahead of broadcast a lot of fans were convinced he was going to be a recast Captain Jack and, while he does display some similarities and could well be another ex-Time Agent, he's a distinctly different character. In keeping with the overall cosplay theme of the episode, Rogue seems like he's playing at being a space adventurer, without the confidence that his character displays. He's got the brooding down pat, but when he has to improvise an entirely new gamepla, he falters. He's a bounty hunter who's completely unprepared for anything but the simplest mission - he didn't even think to bring more than one trap - and he named himself after a D&D class. The poor, sweet geek, no wonder the Doctor likes him so much.

Even with the focus on the Doctor and Rogue, it's another strong episode for Millie Gibson, who gets to have her own side adventure that plays to her and her character's strengths. The plain-talking Northern girl barging her way into polite society is always a winner, and when you throw in the carelessly futuristic talk and increasing adventure savviness she works brilliantly. The Chekov's earring, letting her take her downloadable choreograpy and swap it for battle mode, is a silly but brilliant way to feasibly allow her to kick alien ass, and her taking the deception of the aliens too far and getting herself almost chucked into a prison dimension by the Doctor is spot on too. 

While Ruby's scam was the obvious get-out, I could have believed she was really dead, and that the closing two-parter would have involved the Doctor fighting to bring her back somehow, so convincing was the Doctor's fury. It's also the first time we've seen this Doctor act like a real bastard, condemning the Chuldur to centuries of solitary misery. This is from the man who pleaded with a bunch of racists who hated him to let him save them, but hurting Ruby is clearly a step too far for him.

The Chuldur themselves are a fun, if fairly throwaway monster of the week. Indira Varma is a joy to watch, as always, both as the Duchess of Pemberton and the Chuldur inhabiting her form, and she's a hoot (sorry) when in full-on bird form. I still kind of wish the Duchess had been the Rani, since Varma would be perfect for the role and it would be the one time it would actually make sense for a female villain to actually turn out to be her, but one-off shapeshifting bird lady is fun. I liked Camilla Aiko evne more, as the wonderfully positive young Emily, who turns out to be one of the aliens cosplaying really well. The fact that the entire dramatic scene witnessed (and crashed) earlier by Ruby between Emily and her suitor is completely fake is hilarious.

This is the first script we've had from someone new to the series since 2020, and we really need some more of that. Getting Kate Herron, fresh from Loki, is a great move - if there's anyone who should be working on Doctor Who, it's the Loki team. I don't know much about her writing partner, Briony Redman, but based on this they're a team to follow. If there's an issue with the script, it's down to the episode's length; there simply isn't time to fully convince us that the Doctor and Rogue have fallen for each other, not with everything else that's going on. There'll be time to work on that later, though (because Rogue is definitely coming back. let's be honest). 

Pretty much everything else works, though. The dialogue, direction, music and costumes are all exceptional. This is campy, OTT, silly, fun Doctor Who that's a step above either of the season's opening episodes. They should have kicked everything off with this.

Setting: Bath, Somerset, 1813.

Maketh the Man: Gatwa looks incredible in a burgundy frock coat and full Regency garb, and Groff doesn't look half bad either in his blue and silver outfit. The flashback to Ruby's home has the Doctor in another bright orange jumper. I'm surprised they didn't just make the frock coat orange.

The Many Faces of Doctor Who:

As always with this series and its midnight streaming, I have to try to avoid spoilers online until I have a chance to watch it. This time, I had no trouble avoiding actual plot points, because everyone was raving about this moment. Gatwa gets his moment with a montage of past Doctors, giving us snapshots of all the previous incarnations - including Jo Martin and both David Tennants - and, out of the blue, Richard E. Grant.

This is a surprise, to say the least. Grant played the "other" Ninth Doctor in the animated webcast Scream of the Shalka in 2003, who was rapidly overwritten by Eccleston's Doctor. Suddenly making him part of visual TV canon is a shock, and it's not clear what this means. Is he a past or future incarnation of our Doctor, now that the Timeless Child reveal has left everything up for grabs? Or is Doctor Who paving its way to get on the Multiverse bandwagon, showing us a variant Doctor, as Herron would no doubt put it?

The most surprising thing is RTD allowing this, given how much he hated Grant's portrayal of the Doctor, and how he very publically said so. Surely it was Herron's idea, what with her having worked with Grant as the "Classic Loki" variant on her own series? 

Of course, it's possible he's meant to represent the Comic Relief Tenth Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death, but that would be even more of a headscratcher.

Dedication: Some quick work made this episode dedicated to William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton back in the very beginning of Doctor Who, and who died on the 3rd of June aged 99. He last appeared in a brief cameo in "The Power of the Doctor."

Music of the Spheres: Loved the use of "Bad Guy" in the early part of the episode, which I understand is a direct lift from Bridgerton, and "Poker Face" later on. Can't beat a bit of Kylie on the spaceship, either. The best musical moment, though, was the Doctor singing "A World of Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (and it would be no surprise at all if Gene Wilder's Wonka turned out to be an incarnation of the Doctor too).

WHO REVIEW: Unbound: Adventures in Time and Space

Way back in 2003, Big Finish released a special series of Doctor Who audios name Doctor Who Unbound. It was a classic Elseworlds-type series, asking "What if?" of various points in Doctor Who lore and casting new actors in the role of the Doctor. Of course, the Unbound series wasn't the first time Doctor Who dabbled in the realms of possibility; alternative takes on the Doctor and his adventures have existed since Peter Cushing built a TARDIS in his garden in Dr. Who and the Daleks.

This new fanthology - available in physical and electronic forms for a very limited time only - sees a host of authors explore the strange possibilities of Doctor Who, asking not only "What if?" but also "Why not?" "You what?" and "Whatever next?" With all proceeds going to the Against Malaria Foundation, Unbound flaunts its unofficial, unauthorised nature to do things that would never happen in a licensed product.

Unbound features all manner of Doctors - old, young, noble, villainous, black, white. A couple are vampires and quite a few are female. Some are previously existing "other" Doctors, lifted from the many strange sidesteps the franchise has taken before. Paul Driscoll's "The Curator, The Journalist, and The Pearly Doctor" features two characters who are just destined to meet, and one who's entirely imaginary. Jacob Black takes on Lance Parkin at his own game and produces a follow-up to an array of Gallifreyan lore, as a sequel to The Tides of Time from the DWM comic and a prequel to the great The Infinity Doctors which strikes an almost mythic tone. Jake J. Johnson's story "The Interposition of Gervaise and Emma" is, unless I'm quite mistaken, a crossover between Telos's Time Hunter series and BBV's Dominie audios, a wonderfully obscure pairing. Peter Cushing Doctors turn up more than once, but never quite how you'd expect. "The Planet Collectors" by Nathan Mullins is a lovely adventure that ties in unexpectedly with the main continuity, while Richard Gurl's "The Crater Gas Element" features a completely different Cushing Doctor in a clever crossover.

Some look at paths the series could, or almost did, take, like Kara Dennison's entertaining "Thief of Hearts" which imagines how the TV Movie might have continued into new adventures if a punky Peter Capaldi had been cast instead of Paul McGann. Others see familiar Doctors in worlds that changed on a single decision or unexpected turn out to events. Janine Rivers imagines a different direction for the Doctor and Rose in "Victorious," while Arthur Lockridge imagines a mirror universe version of series ten in "Virtue."

There are horror stories, like Christopher Swain-Tran's unsettling "Under Her Watchful Eye," and "Shadow in the Blood," a New Adventure by Alec Kopecz. Niki Haringsma and Jim Mortimore create a remarkable graphic adventure, before Haringsma takes on the Unbound audio Exile and proves that something genuinely fascinating could have been done with that absolute trainwreck. In fact, the Arabella Weir Doctor isn't the only comedy-styled Doctor from sketches past who appears, and for that matter, not the only one we find drunk in a bar. It adds a touch of repetitiveness, but it's quite irresistible to think that when the Doctor's life becomes a parody they invariably end up drowning their sorrows.

The Master appears almost as often as the Doctor, their stories always intertwined. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stories that feature the Master take a romantic slant, albeit in a weird, inhuman way. "The Master of Her Fate," by Elizabeth A. Allen amazingly reimagines the Shalka Doctor, the android Master and Alison Cheney as a functioning D/s triad, while "Everything Was Beautiful" by NataLunaSans sees the Doctor and the Master in a truly touching story that meditates on psychological healing and the nightmare of anxiety (my favourite story in the book, as it happens). 

Some of the most interesting stories see the Doctor more as a concept than an individual, hingeing on the fascinating idea that anyone might be or could become the Doctor. Stories such as Charles Whitt's "Stardust in Your Eyes," Owen McBrearty's "Inheritance" and the bookending story "Cold Comfort" by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett are some of the most uplifting in the collection.

Some of the stories are moving; some are ingenious meditations on what Doctor Who could be; others are simply good, solid adventures where our hero wears a face we haven't seen before. I haven't even come close to describing all of them (and no disrespect to any authors whose work I haven't mentioned by name, this is collection is just full to bursting). 

Doctor Who fans should grab it while they still can.

You can purchase Unbound: Adventures in Time and Space until the 15th of February here.

Scream for Shalka - the REG Doctor returns in Nine Lives!

Waaaay back in 2003, when Doctor Who was celebrating its 40th anniversary, there was a very exciting announcement. Doctor Who was coming back, with a modern new direction, and a new, ninth Doctor! Before that though, there was another announcement. Doctor Who was coming back as an online cartoon serial, with a new, ninth Doctor played by Richard E. Grant. The excitement around the new TV series killed the thing dead, but Scream of the Shalka, that first, solitary web serial still has its fans.

One area the REG Doctor, or the Shalka Doctor, lived on is in fanfic. Now, after this very, very long break, there's been an upsurge in interest in that Doctor. Shalka was released on DVD last year, and Obverse Books have released a volume analysing the serial as part of their exhaustively researched Black Archive range. And now, we have the pleasure of announcing Nine Lives, a fiction anthology for charity, featuring the Richard E. Grant Doctor in stories written by such luminaries as Rachael Redhead, Kara Dennison, Stuart Douglas and Paul Driscoll, plus more... Scott Claringbold is the editor and there's wonderful cover art by Paul Hanley. Oh, and I have a story in there too: "Frozen Time," a chilly chapter in which the Doctor encounters an old, old enemy...

Pre-orders are closed as I write this, due to a heartwarming and surprising early run of orders, but the book will soon open up for orders again once printing is a go. It's on sale for £12 from Red Ted Books (plus postage, natch) and all proceeds go to the Stroke Association and the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Doctor by Doctor (Sidestep 3)

Cheer Up Goth

Richard E. Grant, 2003

In 2003, Doctor Who was celebrating an anniversary. A number of special audio productions, novels and non-fiction books were released to celebrate the series' fortieth year. When 2003 began, the Doctor had eight official incarnations. By the time the year was out, he had acquired a ninth – but not the one most fans are familiar with.

Once again, some historical background. In the absence of a TV series, BBCi (then the name for the BBC’s internet presence) had begun increasing Doctor Who's official internet presence, culminating in several webcasts, brand new Doctor Who for the twenty-first century. First there was Death Comes to Time, an abandoned 2000 radio pilot which was reworked for online streaming with some limited animation as an accompaniment. The first episode's success led to the production of a full, five-part serial, the animated illustrations becoming more vital to the following of the plot as it progressed. This peculiar story took an epic approach to Doctor Who, relaunching with Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor and eventually killing him all over again. Something of a curate's egg, it was popular enough to convince the BBC to try again with another webcast (and introduced the Minister of Chance, for which we should all be grateful).


Teaming up with Big Finish, the BBC created a second serial, this time starring Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor. 2002's Real Time pitted the Doctor against the Cybermen, and again utilised basic animations as a way of illustrating the audio scenes. With Doctor Who's online presence improved significantly by the dedicated 'BBC Cult' site, the way forward for the series seemed to clearly lie in online streaming. For the fortieth anniversary year, the BBC and BF once again teamed up, resurrecting the unfinished 1980 serial Shada as another enhanced radio production. When Tom Baker declined to return to finish his lost serial, Paul McGann was invited to take part, the story being rewritten for the eighth Doctor. With Shada another hit-rate success, the way forward seemed clear: relaunch Doctor Who properly, as an online series.

For the more ambitious fourth webcast, the Beeb moved from Big Finish to respected animation house Cosgrove Hall.They created Scream of the Shalka, a fully animated webcast written by celebrated author Paul Cornell, featuring a brand new incarnation of the Doctor. Voiced by, and physically based on, Richard E Grant, this new Doctor was described in press releases as the official ninth Doctor. Then the BBC announced the coming of the new TV series and by the time Shalka was broadcast, the new Doctor had been overwritten by the upcoming new ninth Doctor - played, in due course, by Christopher Eccleston. The ninth Doctor of Scream of the Shalka had been consigned to a strange, tangential version of Doctor Who before he even had a chance to make an impact.

Scream of the Shalka was formatted as six episodes of roughly fifteen minutes duration each, presented

with Flash animation and nice, long loading breaks between each scene. At the time, of course, it seemed terrible advanced. As well as Richard E. Grant, always a popular choice for fans' dream-casting, it starred acclaimed actor Sophie Okenedo (now known to Who fans as Liz 10, but around this time filming her Oscar-nominated appearance in Hotel Rwanda) as new companion Alison. Also on the bill were Diana Quick and Sir Derek Jacobi.

It was a strange false start for the revamp of the series, and it's fitting that in such an unusual situation we get a strange version of the Doctor. Physically, the new Doctor is cast much as an archetypal Doctor – tall, slim, dressed in Victorian, rather Sherlock Holmes style clothing. While he is physically based on Grant, for reasons known only to themselves, the animators decided to draw the handsome, rather swarthy actor as a pallid, gothic individual with bags under his eyes. The swept back hairstyle has a touch of the first Doctor about it, but otherwise the overall effect is Dracula-like.

Cornell seemed to have made an effort to make him different from the Time Lord we knew. So, while there are elements that are familiar, there are also several previously unseen quirks. He is snobby, aesthetic, eager to his show superiority to lesser mortals. Yet he is most comfortable talking to a homeless old woman on the streets. He immediately focuses on Alison, his soon-to-be companion, since she is capable and the only person not scared by the strange events in her home town, but refuses to allow himself to become too close to her. Once his work is done, or appears to be, he insists on trying to leave, calling in the military to take care of matters. He seems to have no problem with getting soldiers to do his dirty work, as long as he doesn’t have to socialise with them; he has a problem with the army on a personal, not ethical level.

This is a Doctor who continually analyses himself. He seems obsessed with trying to justify his actions, to himself and his associates, and is acutely aware of the contradictions in his own nature. “I say I do not kill, but then I exterminate thousands”, he says. It's almost as if he's an imposter, playing the Doctor. “I'm just off to do something eccentric,” he says, rather than actually behaving in an eccentric way. He is clearly working for some greater power – presumably the Time Lords, although this is never made clear – and is answerable to them. How many other Doctors would leave a last message to the universe when facing their death, welcoming, however briefly, the promise of oblivion? As an aside, his use of a TARDIS mobile phone caused a good deal of interest at the time but now, since the television series was revived, it seems sensible and obvious, barely worth remarking on.

Most oddly, he now travels with the Master, or at least an android representation of him a sort of robotic footman. It seems that this Doctor needs someone to keep him in check. The Master has been programmed to look after the Doctor’s emotional well-being. Some terrible event has had a lasting effect of the Doctor. It may have had something to do with his regeneration; we don’t know how this came about, but it’s strongly hinted that it cost the life of his last companion. This, more than anything, has left him damaged.

There are similarities with the ‘real’ ninth Doctor. Both act aloof, alien, reluctant to associate with humans. Both hide a vulnerable, damaged soul behind a hard, toughened façade. Both have a streak of defeatism, and are brought out of their shell by a young woman who reinvigorates them. Yet this Doctor is even more of a contradiction, swinging from sullen alien objectivity to show tunes and screaming “Take me home, big boy!” to a giant alien monster. It's the sort of thing one can easily imagine of Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor, but seems bizarre and out-of-place when coming from this vampiric individual.

The presence of the Master is an odd element, but again, it is not entirely against the notions of the revived TV series. Some years later, the tenth Doctor offered to keep the Master in his TARDIS, as a sort of captive companion. Is this perhaps the same sort of deal? Perhaps what's left of the Master after his ignoble fate in the TV movie has been housed in this android body, on the understanding that this is the only chance he will get. He's even voiced by Derek Jacobi, who went on to appear as the Master in Utopia before explosively regenerating into John Simm.

Russell T. Davies later slammed Grant's performance as lazy. It's hard to disagree. Little of the actor's trademark manic charm is present. Grant had, after all, played the Doctor before, in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, a comic skit for the 1999 Comic Relief telethon. After regenerating from the waspish Rowan Atkinson incarnation, the new Richard E. Grant version was vain, overconfident and sexy. This version of the Doctor, however, is withdrawn, barely sharing any chemistry with his costars. However you may feel about Grant’s performance in the role, it has to be said that the Shalka Doctor was a most unusual, intriguing version of the character.

We’ll never know just how he may have been developed had the webcasts continued, but it’s fascinating to speculate. We can imagine him softening over subsequent adventures, with a more human side becoming prominent, in the manner of the first or sixth Doctors. He may have followed the other ninth Doctor's trajectory, coming to terms with the tragic events in his recent past as his adventures played out. It's hard to imagine him remaining quite so aloof and distant for long if he was to have a future in what should be a fun and popular series. The mysterious tragedy to which Shalka alludes would surely have been further explored, and the Doctor’s character along with it. The only further adventure for this Doctor was the short story 'The Feast of the Stone,' still available on the archived 'Vampires' magazine on the BBC's 'Cult' site.

Nonetheless, this Doctor, known to fans as the Shalka Doctor or the REG Doctor, is not entirely forgotten. After a ten year delay, Scream of the Shalka has just been released on DVD, and interviews with its creators have revealed more information on both the proposed future for the webcasts, and the new Doctor's background. It seems that yes, it is the Time Lords who employ him as their agent, following a terrible disaster that had led to the death of his lover and the destruction of Gallifrey, leaving the entire race as echoes in the computer Matrix. The Doctor, it is implied, was at least partly responsible for this event, and serves the ghostly Time Lords as penance. Again, not so different from the background of the new TV series. The following adventure was planned to be Blood of the Robots by horror novelist Simon Clark, with such impressive names as Stephen Baxter and James Swallow lined up for further serials. This was not to be. Scream of the Shalka was the final BBCi webcast featuring the Doctor.

The REG Doctor was overshadowed by the announcement of the new TV series, but not immediately forgotten. As well as a novelisation of Shalka, the REG Doctor had a chapter to himself in the BBC's official fortieth anniversary celebration book, Doctor Who: The Legend. (In the updated reprint, two years later, he had been reduced to a footnote.) The mysterious version of the Doctor that appears in the novella The Cabinet of Light holds a resemblance to Grant's Doctor in his description, apparently entirely by coincidence. And of course fan fiction featuring this Doctor abounds, revelling in the chance to fill in the blanks.

While the REG Doctor has been relegated to a sideline – made 'Unbound' in Big Finish parlance – there are, potentially, ways of reconciling him with the rest of the Whoniverse. He never states that he is the ninth incarnation, although he hints at it once or twice. Perhaps he is a future version of the Doctor, having rescued the Master from oblivion in the time-locked death of Gallifrey. Or perhaps he lies in a parallel universe, split from the main timestream by the catastrophic events of the war? Many fans wondered if he really was the ninth Doctor, existing between the McGann and Eccleston versions, forcibly forgotten for some terrible crime (a storyline that now seems to be in use for John Hurt's mysterious incarnation). The appearance of Richard E. Grant as Dr. Simeon/the Great Intelligence in the most recent TV series perhaps offers another answer. Perhaps the Intelligence's infiltration of the Doctor's timeline has led to is sprouting alternative incarnations that look like Simeon – a dark, warped ninth incarnation and a cocky, vain tenth – living in closed off, anomalous timelines?

Today, after eight years of hugely successful Doctor Who television productions, Scream of the Shalka is little more than a curio. Nonetheless, we can wonder where this most mysterious of Doctors may have taken us in the distant parallel world where the series never returned to TV; a world where we instead had an internet-based cartoon series led not by a Northern bloke in a leather jacket but by a prickly, sullen Victorian.

Stuff:

This is an expanded and updated version of an article that originally appeared in Panic Moon.

As well as being available on DVD, Scream of the Shalka is still viewable for free on the BBC Doctor Who website if you have an archaic enough version of Flash. The Feast of the Stone is still available on the 'Vampires' page. The artwork heading this piece is taken from that site and is by Daryl Joyce.

For fan fiction featuring further explorations of the Shalka Doctor, try reading my own A Spoonful Weighs a Ton.